Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Boundaries: People and Places of Central Otago -- Brian Turner

Boundaries: People and Places of Central
Otago

Brian Turner

Published 2 November 2015; $45.00; Godwit

This new collection of writing — from one of
Central Otago’s beloved characters — is especially for anyone who is thinking about moving
to a smaller community. Particularly so if they’re looking for a better quality
of life and wanting a closer connection to the people and the place in which
they live. This is especially relevant given the pressures of city life on
today’s families.

It’s also for those who have cycled or driven
through and fallen for the magnificent and very special landscape of Central
Otago.

Boundaries is a handsome companion to Brian
Turner’s bestselling collection Into the Wider World and it is Brian’s
tribute to the people and places of Central Otago. Hailing from the Otago
Turner sporting family, Central’s Oturehua (population around 30) has been
Brian’s home now since 1999.

Brian’s name had become synonymous with
Central Otago – albeit a different Central – one well removed from the tourist
centres and vineyards. His Central is at the boundaries; watching the local
rugby teams, fishing the waters of the Manuherikia, cycling towards the
snow-covered Hawkdun Range. It's where he and his neighbours live and work.
It’s where going for a ride ‘around the block’ takes the best part of three
hours.

An angler, passionate conservationist,
cyclist, journalist, beloved poet and ardent southerner, Brian says that after
having written Into the Wider World, which was a big canvas, he now
wanted to write about a more intimate Central Otago, both through his own eyes
as well as through those locals who have lived in the area most of their lives.

‘I wanted them to tell their stories and talk about what
Central means to them. So you have two takes on it in that regard.

‘There’s a quirkiness about the book that has given me the
opportunity to discuss why I believe the future of New Zealand, and human kind,
ought to be with localities and regions trying to make themselves as
sustainable and resilient as possible given what appears to be facing us. It’s
a cry for regions to pull together and try and become even more resourceful
than they are at the moment. I think what we have in Central is a potpourri of
the best kind of what communities can be and that’s why it works. People pitch
in. They believe in the importance of self-help but they also understand that
when you’re living in, what is deemed to be by some people’s standards, an out
of the way place, you are at various times reliant on assistance from others.

Boundaries includes a good mixture of gritty, brilliantly descriptive
and amusing material from Brian not to mention many outstanding poems and
splendid photographs from Steve Calveley, a retired North Island GP who built a
house just up the road from Brian. It’s peppered with impressions, evocations
and recollections of the way life was, and is today. All set within the
spectacular hills, rivers and big skies of Central Otago.